1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a staple cartridge system, particularly to a staple cartridge system constituted to be able to use a plurality of types of staples by one type of an electric stapler.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is widely and generally used a copier built with an electric stapler and constituted to be able to continuously carry out a copying step and a binding step. An electric stapler built in a copier is of a type of using a staple cartridge containing to stack staple sheets adhered in parallel with linear staples for containing a large amount of staples. A document is bound by the staple of which the linear staple is formed into a gate-like shape by a forming mechanism.
Normally, a copier of this kind is built with an electric stapler for binding a booklet (up to about 50 sheets) and an electric stapler for binding a larger volume of a booklet (up to about 100 sheets). This is because there is a case in which when, for example, a booklet of about 10 sheets is bound by a long staple for binding 100 sheets, legs of a staple folded to bend are prolonged. This is not only the outlook is poor but also in a binding process, points of the two legs of the staple are abutted to each other and projected from a surface of the booklet by penetrating the sheets again. Accordingly, a control portion of the copier is constituted to select to drive an electric stapler for 50 sheets and an electric stapler for 100 sheets in accordance with a number of sheets for copying to prevent such a drawback from being brought about.
A linear length differs between a staple for binding 50 sheets and a staple for binding 100 sheets and therefore, conventionally, dimensions of respective staple cartridges differ from each other. Accordingly, electric stapler main bodies are respectively used exclusively from each other and are not compatible to each other. However, when outer shapes of the staple cartridges are made the same and either of the staple cartridges can be used by one type of an electric stapler, in the case of building with a plurality of pieces of electric staplers, the cost can be reduced by common formation of the electric stapler main body. However, in that case, in order that a copier uses different staples in accordance with a number of sheets for binding as described above, it is necessary that the copier can determine the type of the staple at the inside of the staple cartridge.
Hence, there poses a technical problem to be resolved in order to enable to use a plurality of types of staples by one type of an electric stapler and provide a staple cartridge by which a copier can determine a type of a staple. This is an object of the invention to resolve the above-described problem.
The invention has been proposed to achieve the above-described object and there is provided a staple cartridge system constituted by a plural of types of staple cartridges respectively having different inner dimensions in correspondence with plural types of staple sheets having different linear lengths and having the same shape and the same outer configuration dimension. The staple cartridge system is formed such that a bottom face of the staple cartridge is provided with a staple detecting hole for detecting presence or absence of the staple sheet and charge of the cartridge, and the type of the cartridge and presence or absence of the staple can be determined by presence or absence of a cartridge identifying hole via a sensor provided to an electric stapler.